Disappointed with KDE 4's performance and other shortcomings, Timothy Pearson continued KDE 3.5 development under the name Trinity. Today the first third major update of the Trinity Desktop Environment is released, providing an alternative upgrade path for KDE users who do not feel comfortable with KDE 4.

People hear what they want to hear and then they echo it. Especially if some of those people are high profile like Linus. I don't actually believe the number of people who "hate" the new desktops is anywhere near as predominant as a casual glance at tech sites like this one and /. would have one believe.

I also think a lot of what you saw in the early days was kneejerk reaction to the initial attempts to use the new environment without learning to make it work for the user instead of against. That'll improve as they get more polished and features find their way back into the codebase.

Of course there are people out there who legitimately want to stay with the old way of doing things, like the Trinity folks, and are willing to put forth the effort to preserve it. I applaud those people for taking the initiative and wish them nothing but success in the future.